How to Get Scammed By a Woo Woo Guru
This is a deleted chapter from Tired as F*ck. ENJOY.
Oh, hello. Today, as promised, I’m sharing the first “deleted chapter” from my second book, Tired as F*ck. This chapter stands alone, sort of, but will make way more sense in the context of the book. The book talks a lot about my cult-susceptibility, and cult mentality, as well as my attempt after attempt to miraculously heal myself on a deep spiritual and cellular level, first with diets and then with self help. So if you haven’t read the book, this chapter may seem kind of *random.*
The reason I deleted this chapter is because a, the book was already too long, and b, in the context of the book, it actually had the book lose a little bit of momentum, because where this was supposed to come in the book, it was just about to ramp up to my “Two Years of Rest.”
Also, just for context, yes, this “woo-woo guru” “scammed” me, BUT, as you will be able to tell… I’m still woo-woo. So so woo-woo. It’s just that, navigating the woo-woo world requires a lot of discernment.
Alrighty!! Here we go! Enjoy:
How to get scammed by a woo woo guru
There was a woman who I followed in an ‘online business’ facebook group, let’s call her Melissa. Melissa was doing energy work to help people with their business. Her focus was on money blocks: our negative beliefs about money. And I was enthralled. I started following her and doing some of the free energy work she offered, and it was … helping? Or was that the placebo effect? It seemed like she was offering the same thing EFT was offering, only there was no weird tapping. (EFT / energy work is explained in Tired as F*ck). But it felt streamlined. It felt simpler. It felt more palatable than EFT. And I had been looking for something more palatable to share with my F*ck It Diet readers, who were looking for ways to help them move past their mental and emotional resistance to eating more / gaining weight / trusting our bodies.
This is where my cult-susceptible brain got triggered. This woman… was magical. She was able to figure out people’s energetic blocks and heal them. How??!! She was one of many online coaches who taught money mindset. “If you pay me to help you with your money mindset, you will make more money.” Except, in this instance, she was a magical energy worker. She held the power.
I decided I was going to use all of her techniques on myself, not just for “business and money blocks” but to see if it helped my audition anxiety “blocks” and my romantic “blocks.” I’d just dated two different actors, back to back, and it had gone really badly. I was messed up and still heartbroken over one of them. And I also noticed that it brought up a lot of fears and subconscious beliefs about me and dating and marriage and what it meant to be single. So I thought, great! I’ll use this opportunity, and this energy work, and process ALL OF MY EMOTIONAL BLOCKS. I WILL EMERGE HAPPIER THAN EVER BEFORE. I’m going to use it on auditions! I’m going to use it on love! I’m going to heal myself from the inside out and never be sad agaaaaiiinnnnn. Well, I didn’t think that consciously, but my subconscious search for a miracle cure kicked in. Maybe this was it. Maybe this is the answer.
I remember I told my mom that I was working really hard to feel all of my unprocessed feelings, and heal all of my underlying emotions and beliefs, and to become aware of all of my patterns and release them all. She said, “That’s… nice hun. But, don’t you ever just let yourself… float?” Float?! What does that even mean? Who has time to float? I have issues I need to HEAL. (This was two years before my burnout and my Two Years of Rest. My mom was right. I needed to float for a bit.)
But back to 2014. Not only did I think could use this new method to potentially heal me, but I also thought that maybe this was something I could be doing with my readers and TFID workshop attendees?!?! I had been telling people to do the EFT tapping but half the people would come back to me and say: Caroline, this is just too weird. So as soon as this magical woman offered a practitioner training, I jumped. Yes. I want to do this. She even reached out to me by facebook messenger and said she thought I’d be really good at it. (Cue eyeroll. I realized later that that was just a sales tactic. And it worked.)
It cost $8000. $8000 to train in this exclusive technique that she had come up with. And I had to fly to England. And pay for airfare and lodging. Oh god. But, this was the first year I was actually making some money. So, I could afford it without ruining the rest of my life. And, I would be able to make so much money once I was trained! Right? It was worth it.
So I did it. I paid the money. And for the flights to fly to Manchester. The group of 12 of us who flew there to train all had dinner with Melissa that first night we arrived, and at the end of dinner, she gave us all NDAs to sign. Huh? We were able to take it to our rooms to read over, but… no chance to talk to a lawyer… nothing. I could sense other people were agitated. It was starting off shady. And in the NDA was the first time we learned that there would be a recurring fee to be allowed to keep our certification. Ok… hidden fees. Great. Thanks for telling us that after we paid for the training and flew across the world.
Then the next day, after handing in our NDAs, we got into the actual training. Most of us assumed we would learn to do the work she did, the way she did it in groups with us (most of us were clients of her’s and wanted to learn what she did with our own clients). But no. We were learning a very basic version that we could only do one on one. Why didn’t she make that clear before we bought this program? Well! Because we wouldn’t have wanted to do it if we had known that! I wouldn’t have wanted to! Most of us had been planning on running groups to use the methods she was teaching.
She kept saying, “maybe I’ll teach you more at a level 2 practitioner training.” Oh great we have to pay $8000 more to learn what we thought we were going to learn this time?!?!?
While we were learning her method, I kept asking her for more explanations on why the method was the way it was. Why are there certain hand positions for different things? I was looking for more of an understanding. Why did this method have to be done this specific way? And she would answer, “it just does.” Oh. Perfect. This is fucking bullshit.
If you are a paid subscriber, you can read the rest, or listen to my narrated audio version.